Love: What it truly is and what it isn’t

Archbishop Wenski's column for the October edition of the Florida Catholic

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami

As
Catholics, we do not believe that we are Platonic “ghosts in machines” or
Cartesian “substantive minds.” We believe that we are “ensouled bodies” — we
have one human nature, made up of a unity of body and soul. Our bodies — and
our differentiation into male and female — are not extraneous to ourselves, to
our very beings; rather, our body and our sexuality are part of our identity as
persons.

For
this reason the Church has always affirmed her belief in the resurrection of
the body — that, after the final judgment, we will recover in the glory of
heaven (or in its opposite) that unity of body and soul that makes up who we
are as persons. Just as we speak of a sacrament as an outward or visible sign
of an inner or spiritual reality, our bodies “sacramentally” display our souls.
In this way, we can speak of the language of the body. Our body language can
communicate the deepest sentiments of the human person created by God for love
and communion.

As
now Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, pointed out in his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, the word “love” is
frequently used and misused. Most commonly, it represents what the ancient
Greeks called “eros”; that is, the
erotic love between a man and a woman. But the Church, from her earliest days,
proposed a new vision of self-sacrificial love expressed in the word “agape.” The natural human love (eros) between a man and a woman is a
beautiful and sacred thing but it needs discipline and maturity, it needs “agape” lest it lose its true dignity and
purpose.

Our
modern society certainly has exalted “eros”
but at the same time it has also debased the human body and in doing so has
impoverished “eros.” Eros, reduced to just “sex,” has become
a commodity — a mere “thing” to be bought and sold. The lack of modesty, our
complacency with the “soft porn” that has invaded our popular culture, is not a
sign of our society’s “being at ease” with the body — as opposed to an older
generation’s supposed prudish uptightness. Rather, it is a sign of our
society’s contempt for the human body. Many men and women today consider their
bodies and their sexuality as purely material — somehow outside of themselves
as if they were “extra baggage or an external shell” and thus able to be used and exploited at will.

As the Fathers of the Second Vatican
Council reminded us, man can only realize himself through the sincere gift of
himself. The Theology of the Body developed by St. John Paul II speaks of the "nuptial
meaning” of the body; for the human body, constituted male or female, reveals
man and woman's call to become a gift for one another, a gift fully realized in
their "one flesh" union.

The body also has a "generative
meaning" that (God willing) brings a "third" into the world
through their communion. In this way, marriage constitutes a "primordial
sacrament" understood as a sign that truly communicates the mystery of
God's Trinitarian life and love to husband and wife — and through them — to
their children, and through the family to the whole world.

For
this reason, adultery and cohabitation without marriage, one-night stands and
so called same-sex unions, while certainly described by some as “erotic,” are
in themselves incompatible to our true vocation to love.

These
expressions of a fraudulent “body language” are not worthy of the dignity of
man created male and female in the image and likeness of God. A fraudulent body
language only “communicates” counterfeits of true love. To be authentic, our
“body language” must reflect the truth about human nature as created by God. Only
manifestations of self-giving that correspond to that truth will tend to that
communion of persons to which humanity is directed.